The ongoing crisis in Syria and the possibility of U.S. military involvement is a very important issue facing our nation.

There are two central arguments that have led me to oppose military action against Syria. Firstly, unilaterally attacking Syria without meaningful international support is fundamentally flawed foreign policy. I believe it is a terrible precedent for the United States to assume full and exclusive global responsibility to commit our military, America's sons and daughters in uniform, to the task of unilaterally moving against any country that violates weapons of mass destruction protocols while the rest of the world simply stands by and watches.

I think such a decision would create a grave moral hazard where other nations could rightfully expect us to assume that responsibility in every instance - without United Nations support, without NATO support and without international support.

While I realize there is great frustration with the inability to act at the United Nations and the difficulty with both Russia and China at the United Nations Security Council - especially when the humanitarian interests are so compelling - there is also a danger in the long term of brushing aside the need to get United Nations or broad international support to undertake a military action against another country on purely humanitarian grounds where no direct or imminent threat to our country exists. That danger in going around the United Nations, as has been proposed, is the danger of setting that precedent so that any country can circumvent the need to go to the United Nations as long as they can construct or merely articulate a humanitarian basis for attacking a country that poses no threat to them.

The second argument against military action as described by Secretary Kerry is that I do not believe that there is a remote possibility that it will achieve what we hope for, which is a better result on the ground in Syria. We have been told that this will be a surgical strike; a targeted, limited operation with no boots on the ground.

Here is the problem. The premise of this attack is that it will send a message to Syrian President Bashar Assad that the use of chemical weapons is unacceptable. And because of this attack, the behavior of the Assad regime will change.

The truth of the matter is that Assad already has this message. Syria shares a more than 400 mile border with Iraq. During the Iraq War, between 1.2 -1.5 million Iraqi refugees flooded into Syria. From 2003 to 2009, Assad had a front row seat as the U.S. military defeated the Iraqi military in five weeks. He watched as coalition-supported opposition groups eventually took revenge on the dictator of that country, Saddam Hussein and his sons, and eventually dug him out of a spider hole and hung him after a brief trial.

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In other words, President Assad knows what we are capable of. Firing a few tomahawk missiles will not drive that message home any more effectively than the example of Iraq. And notably, Hizbollah has been under sustained bombardment before by Israel in 2006 and, by all accounts, withstood it reasonably well.

So my concern is that either after these limited strikes the Assad regime will be emboldened and strengthened because of its ability to withstand military attack by the U.S. or, we will be left no choice but to up the ante and put boots on the ground in pursuit of regime change in order to avoid embarrassment.

Lastly, as others have noted, the current civil war in Syria is being waged by a broad range of opposition groups. Some are extremist groups Al Qaeda, Jabhat Al Nusra, and other radical Islamist Sunni rebel groups. Many within these particular groups are fighting to convert Syria into an Islamist Republic governed by Sharia law.

And while there are a great many rebels who are secular it is extremely difficult to imagine a way to ensure that the result of even a limited military action will bring about a better political reality for the people of Syria.

While the possibility of a diplomatic solution shows some initial promise, the details remain to be worked out. A scenario is currently being discussed that would require Syria to surrender its chemical weapons to international monitors. While I am encouraged by these efforts, negotiations have just started and we are far from an agreement.

In the end, the decision to respond once again with military force in the Middle East is a serious one and in this instance is unlikely to achieve the desired result. Diplomacy, as difficult as it is, offers a greater long term gain for our nation and stability around the world.

Congressman Stephen F. Lynch represents the Massachusetts 8th Congressional District. He held a town hall forum in Syria on Thursday, September 12th in Quincy and will hold an additional forum on Monday, September 16th from 6:30-8:00 p.m. at the Ironworkers Local #7 Hall, located at 195 Old Colony Avenue in South Boston.